Brian Carroll's Blog focused on B2B lead generation, sales leads, and marketing for the complex sale.

February 08, 2011

In essence, that’s what Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content for MECLABS, asked of me when he requested I publish my last blog post today. Of course, this isn’t my last post, but I like Daniel’s idea and am honored to join other top bloggers in sharing our most important message.

For me, that’s to embrace the power of trust and let it drive everything we do. You see, trust is the foundation of relationship, and relationship is what business is built upon. Without trust, there is no relationship and there is no business.

So how do you create that trust? Paradoxically, it’s never been easier or more challenging.

As we all know, social media has changed everything. It seemed like yesterday that marketers were able to micromanage every aspect of image and message disseminated to the marketplace. Now, our customers say who we are. So, of course, if what we’re saying about ourselves isn’t aligning with what’s actually happening, we’re going to be in trouble fast.

On the other hand, thanks to social media, it’s never, ever been easier to demonstrate why we are trustworthy and why we are worth doing business with. And this can make all the difference in the world in creating opportunity. I know it has for me.

You may recall that the dot-com bubble burst not long before 2003, and like many other marketing organizations at the time, my teleprospecting and lead generation business was seriously struggling. We lost our three top clients and 40 percent of our revenues in a mere two months. I was contemplating how we were going to survive the crisis when I recalled clients repeatedly telling me, “We really value your services. But we value more than just that – your ideas have really helped improve our lead generation results.”

That’s when inspiration struck. I thought, “Why not teach our future clients what we learned and add value before they even start to look for services like ours?”

When you give people what they value, without expecting anything in return, you build trust. So, with that in mind, I started the B2B Lead Generation Blog in October of that year. It was free, it was easy. And it has resulted in opportunities that I would have never imagined in my wildest dreams - from publishing a bestseller to becoming part of an organization the caliber of MECLABS.

Looking back, it feels nothing less than miraculous. Such is the power of trust. And that power begins with trusting yourself enough to embrace your own inspiration and take that first step. You never know where it may lead.

In it, they describe what the companies that out-perform and out-compete their peers have in common: Revenue Performance Management, and Brian Kardon, Eloqua’s Chief Marketing Officer, perfectly articulates the goals of today’s smartest marketers.

What a synchronicity. After all, Dave’s presentation certainly spoke to Revenue Performance Management – RPM for short - without saying it by name, when he challenged marketers to send better leads to sales, even if it meant significantly less leads. With an accountant’s precision, he calculated the profits that could result.

In essence, RPM is all about optimizing the sales and marketing funnel, and in today’s business environment, that should be everyone’s highest priority.

But how are organizations accomplishing this real time in the real world? After all, it’s much easier to theorize than to actually execute that theory in an unpredictable business environment.

We’ve invited Paul Teshima, Eloqua’s Senior Vice President of Customer Strategy and Success, and Hope Frank, Chief Marketing Officer for Webtrends, to answer this question at our next B2B Lead Generation Roundtable Webinar, From Demand Generation to Revenue Performance Management, on February 1.

Paul will share case studies and anecdotes on how companies are leveraging RPM right now to drive more opportunity, more sales and, ultimately, the highest returns on their marketing and sales investments. Hope will go into explain how her company is executing RPM for themselves and reveal their outcomes so far.

If you’re ready to learn, in detail, how the powerful business theory of RPM is being put into practice by some of the world’s most successful organizations, and get the knowledge you need to do the same for yourself, be sure to attend.

January 11, 2011

Over the holidays, I had some time to really dive into the LinkedIn B2B LeadGen Roundtable discussions. One started by Ann Thornley-Brown, President & CEO, Executive Oasis International, Toronto, caught my attention. She started the discussion in August, yet members continue to provide feedback.

Ann wanted to know how happy the group was with the lead generation results of their social media campaigns. “Are your efforts on LinkedIn and Twitter paying off?” she queried. “How many leads have you generated? How many specific pieces of business have you picked up? I know a lot of bright people who are really active on these sites and very few are seeing results. How about you?”

Her question, and too many of her 30-plus responses, illustrated the disconnection between the expectations of marketers who are out on the frontlines every day and marketing gurus proclaiming the wonders of social media. After all, if you Google ”Top 10 B2B Trends in 2011” you’ll see social media listed on every one of them.

Then why, if Ann’s discussion is any indication, are so many marketers dissatisfied with the results they’re getting from it?

He’s also been in marketing for more than three decades, well before the internet was even on the scene. This gives him some not-so-typical long-term perspective in a world that demands instant gratification.

If anyone could provide insight to why this is going on, it’s Sergio. Here’s his take:

December 17, 2010

Have you had some great marketing successes this year? Then you’ll want to let my colleagues at MarketingSherpa know. They’re compiling their ninth annual MarketingSherpa 2011 Wisdom Report. It shares the best thoughts, ideas, anecdotes and takeaways from marketers in 2010.

In fact, even if you've had disappointments, and are willing to share, they’d like to hear from you as well. After all, failure is often the best teacher.

Tell us, what are some of the best lessons you learned this year?

Great marketers are always working so diligently to put everything and everyone else in the spotlight. That effort deserves attention. That’s why I strongly encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity to attain some very positive publicity.

December 15, 2010

If you’re a follower of marketing and sales blogs beyond just this one, you’ve probably noticed all kinds of blogs and tweets sprouting up today around The Blog Tree, just released by Eloqua and JESS3.

And I think the attention is well deserved.

Every blogger has some kind of blog roll, but without guessing from the names or clicking through each and every one listed, it’s challenging to know what you can learn from them and what value they provide. And if you wanted to know what blogs influence them, how they’re connected to other blogs, or how they contrast and compare to the rest, you were out of luck unless you had hours upon hours of time to invest in research.

Until The Blog Tree.

At a glance, you can see the scope of the best content in the marketing and sales blogosphere and how it all works together. Joe Chernov, Director of Content at Eloqua, puts it this way:

“Anyone can cobble together a list of Twitter tips or 'must-read' blogs and crown themselves ‘content marketers,'” he explains. “But when you produce content that surprises, informs and delights, you don’t have to market it. It blooms naturally.”

You see, I turned 40 there and brought my family along to celebrate. It was a great experience for all of us. Barcelona is a beautiful city.

It was thought-provoking to observe a different culture, one where making money appears to rank an easy second to family and friends.

I especially noticed this when we went out to dinner (at 10pm which is quite typical in Spain). People who had arrived before us were still there when we paid our bill.

The restaurant wasn’t trying to push them out to attract more customers. Instead they allowed their guests to enjoy the experience of being out together, lingering over a meal, and sharing conversation - something they clearly were doing long after their dinner was done. It was a scene that was replayed throughout our trip.

It drove home to me, once again, how conversation is absolutely critical to relationships, no matter who you are, no matter where you’re from.

When I was starting out in marketing, doing teleprospecting and lead generation, 16 years ago, email was just emerging. My tools of the trade were mostly phone and fax back then. But marketing was still about having a conversation with the customer; it was still all about building relationships. And, some of the marketers I met at the conference - who, like me, traveled across the globe to be there - are doing what I was doing years ago because the human touch matters.

But, interestingly, they all face the same struggles as the rest of us:

How do we give our sales team more effective selling time?

How can we build better alignment between marketing and sales?

How can we make sure sales follows-up on marketing-generated leads?

How do we measure ROI of marketing programs?

How do we convince our sales people to update the database?

No matter where you are in the world or in your career, no matter how many marketing tools and you have to available, marketing all boils down to the challenge of having relevant conversations with the right people in the right companies and building the kind of relationships that ultimately result in sales.

So much has changed in the marketing world since I entered it at age 24, and yet, in so many ways, it is essentially the same.

December 06, 2010

In just a couple of days, I’ll be in Barcelona speaking at the Cisco Partner Velocity Conference.

To say I’m looking forward to this opportunity is an understatement. I'm honored to be asked to share my insights with their channel partners from around the world. And I can’t wait to hear firsthand the challenges and opportunities these marketers are dealing with.

The timing of this event couldn't be better. Marketing is undergoing a remarkable evolution at this moment. The multitude of mediums we can use to speak to our marketplace is revolutionizing how we work. I believe the days of campaigns – where we start-stop-measure-tweak and start all over again – are over. Today, for marketing to effectively drive revenue, it must be a continuous, meaningful conversation.

The most successful marketers will know how to lead that conversation both internally and externally so they can communicate to their customer the right things in the right way at the right time. Here’s a snapshot of what I mean and some of what I plan on sharing in Barcelona:

You speak through channels: make sure what you’re saying makes sense

If you’re going to say something to customers, make it meaningful to them. Here’s the acid test: anything you tweet, email, or blog should be valuable to them even if they never buy from you. And if you lure them in with that tweet, email or post, make sure that conversation stays on track throughout the sales process. Consider an experiment that the MECLABS Conversion Group conducted with NetSuite:

They optimized a pay-per-click (PPC) ad to specifically outline what makes them stand apart: the world's #1 on-demand software with 6,459 customers worldwide.

They changed the landing page that customers were directed to from the PPC ad. The page’s messaging and images continued the conversation by directly connecting to key messages on the PPC ad. There was no question that customers knew they were in the right place doing the right thing.

They changed the order form, a place where many clients experience anxiety about whether they should proceed, to reiterate what motivated them to start the transaction in the first place.

The result: a 272% increase in responses to their lead generation form, 268% more projected revenue and a 302% increase in monthly profit.

You use channels – in this case, the PPC to landing page to order form – to converse with the customer. Make sure the entire channel is optimized, not just an ad, not just a web page. When you conduct marketing in a vacuum, you start a different conversation in a different way over and over again with the same audience. If someone did that to you in real-life, real-time, you’d get annoyed and walk away.

November 18, 2010

If your 2011 marketing budget is tighter than you want it to be, trying giving sales less leads.

According to Marketing Sherpa’s just-released 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, a whopping 80 percent of the 935 respondents said they pass unqualified leads along to sales. That’s a costly mistake.

Let me explain why:

For every 100 raw leads, only 4 to 7 are ready to buy. It’s no wonder that the 1,800 companies surveyed as part of CSO Insights Sales Performance Optimization Report said their sales teams spend 20 percent of their time generating leads. (And I’ve known of sales departments spending a lot more time than that.) In essence, they’re sorting through the raw leads that marketing sends them to get to that 4 to 7 percent who might actually buy.

What if marketing did a better job of qualifying leads before sending them to sales? In his webinar, Trends and Challenges of Lead Generation in 2011, Dave Green explained, in graphic detail, the impressive amount of profit that could result.

Think about it: What if you were able to reclaim 10 or 20 percent of your sales budget by increasing sales productivity? What if a mere percentage of that was diverted to your marketing budget to invest in better lead-qualification tools such as marketing automation, content strategy, lead nurturing, and telequalification? How much revenue could that potentially drive? How can you make a water-tight financial case to your CEO to prove that giving marketing more money will help significantly increase sales productivity and revenue capacity?

October 29, 2010

Companies that adopt a closed-loop process connecting marketing and sales report a higher return on marketing investment (RMOI) than those that don’t.

But RMOI just isn’t going to happen if your closed loop is a black hole. And that’s certainly the case at too many organizations judging from the feedback I received at my presentation this week at MarketingSherpa’s B2B Marketing Summit. (If you want more details, Andrew Spoeth with Marketo wrote a good summary of what I had to say over Modern B2B Marketing blog.)

When I asked my audience, all of them marketers, “How many of you have a problem with sales not updating your CRM?” Nearly everyone raised their hands and laughter erupted.

Which perfectly proves my point: depending on a software to close the loop is like a football team using infrequent text messages to communicate plays. You’re not going to communicate quickly enough what you really need to know to get to where you want to go.

That’s why I’m a huge proponent of huddling: face-to-face or voice-to-voice meetings where the marketing and sales teams gather to gauge progress, deal with challenges and opportunities, and celebrate successes.

Do you see value in huddling and do you think it’s feasible in your organizations? Why do you suppose, despite our best efforts, many sales people seemingly avoid or skip updating marketing generated leads, contacts and notes in CRM data bases?

October 21, 2010

When I asked members of the B2B Lead Generation Roundtable on LinkedIn how companies can improve alignment between sales and marketing, our discussion board was inundated with keen insight and brutal honesty. Marketers and sales professionals were clearly eager to square off about why we too often miss the mark and what we can do about it.

This was precisely the frontline reality I was seeking before presenting “Playbook for Marketing and Sales Alignment: How to Collaborate to Optimize Lead Generation Programs,” at Frost & Sullivan’s Growth, Innovation and Leadership Conference last month in San Francisco.

Even though, as most of you know, I intensely study this issue, business transforms itself at light speed; that’s why I appreciate the thousands of professionals who make up the B2B Lead Generation Roundtable. They’re in the thick of it, dealing with the challenges, seizing the opportunities. For them, there’s no time for philosophizing; it’s all about driving revenue. That’s why the roundtable is my favorite sounding board and a powerful source of inspiration.

If you review the pages of responses - they’re a lively read, trust me - they all point to what Doug Kessler, Creative Director of Velocity Partners, UK, summed up in his statement, “This feels like the next big frontier in B2B.”

Doug nailed it: where there’s room for improvement there’s room for opportunity and the revenues that come with it.

If the discussion is any indication, savvy marketers and sales professionals are well on their way to making the most of that opportunity: they know when they’ve gone off track, but they definitely know how to get to where they need to go. Here is a small sampling of some juicier tidbits:

If you don’t have strong leadership, you won’t stay on track. “It starts at the top,” explains Andrea Courtin, Marketing Consultant for TrusteSolutions in Houston, TX. “For sales and marketing teams to truly align, they need a mandate from the executive team.”

October 18, 2010

If you didn’t get a chance to attend MarketingSherpa's B2B Summit in San Francisco a last week, you missed an excellent opportunity to gain knowledge you could have used right away for better results. I had a great time.

For me, what was most valuable was learning and connecting with fellow attendees and hearing about how they’re driving results for their companies. I’m looking forward to gaining even more insight at the B2B Marketing Summit in Boston, October 25-26.

If you haven’t signed up for the B2B Summit, I encourage check it out, since they’re offering a special rate saving you $400. Register here.

If you want to find out what you missed and could use some fresh ideas to immediately improve your lead generation check out the following posts:

October 11, 2010

Everyone’s getting squeezed for ROI. This is nothing new but the pressure is even higher for marketers who are looking at proving their revenue contribution. We've all heard the stories about the accolade-winning marketing campaigns that didn't move the sales needle. CEOs want far more than just awards and pretty brochures. They want proven results.

They’re demanding marketers demonstrate – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that they’re driving revenue. So, ideally, marketers set before them spread sheets proclaiming high lead-conversion and even better expense-to-revenue ratios; the CEO smiles with satisfaction and pads the next year’s marketing budget.

But should they?

That’s the essential question of Dave Green’s whitepaper, Measuring Lead Generation Effectiveness: a Case for a New Approach. He challenges marketers to be painfully honest: do they really deserve the credit they’re taking? Are their fabulous campaigns the primary reason deals are closing, or are the wins a reflection of the blood, sweat and tears of tenacious sales professionals?

September 28, 2010

If it's almost unheard of for your sales team to make a cold call thanks to a sales pipeline bursting with steaming-hot leads generated by your marketing department, skip this post.

If it isn't, I strongly encourage you to read the following article, which initially appeared on the MarketingExperiments Blog. It's written by Dave Green, the Director of Best Practices, Applied Research at MECLABS, the parent company of MarketingExperiments and InTouch.

I'd like to hear your thoughts about what Dave has to say, and what your organization is (or isn't) doing to ensure marketing does its job so sales professionals can do theirs.

For most of us, the phrase “demand generation” conjures up things like campaigns, social media, trade shows, and the corporate website.

But what about sales prospecting? Despite all the newfangled marketing automation tools, most CEOs increase the funding for demand generation by authorizing the expansion of the sales organization.

Surprised?

You shouldn’t be. Books like SNAP Selling, SPIN Selling and Solution Selling for years have been teaching sales people to generate demand, one conversation at a time. Most companies don’t call what sales people do “demand creation” or “demand generation.” No, we’ve given it more pedestrian names, like “sales prospecting” or “cold calling.” But, really, what’s the difference?

The percent of the sales budget spent on demand generation.

Efficient sales teams spend 10 percent of their time prospecting. They network. They get referrals. They leverage LinkedIn and InsideView. You know. All those really cool things Anneke Seley and Brent Holloway have written about in Sales 2.0.

But sales teams for many companies spend 20 to 30 percent of their time prospecting. And even 40 or 50 percent of time spent prospecting is not unheard of. As the percent of time spent prospecting increases, the return on investment generally decreases.

If you chose answer number #1, the first thing I would say is, “Well done.” The second thing I would say is, “When is the last time you’ve talked with your sales team?”

The lack of synergy between Sales and Marketing on lead generation is so common as to risk cliché. To help sales and marketing teams address this issue, on September 15th in San Jose, CA I’ll be presenting “Playbook for Marketing and Sales Alignment: How to Collaborate to Optimize Lead Generation Programs” at Frost & Sullivan’s GIL (Growth, Innovation, Leadership) 2010: Silicon Valley.

Frost & Sullivan refers to GIL as “The Global Community of Growth, Innovation and Leadership.” I’m looking forward to attending to share new ideas about BtoB marketing with CMOs and VPs and Directors of Marketing.

So if you chose answer #2, #3 or #4 to the above question, I’d love to see you in San Jose to hear about your challenges and help you learn how to address this proverbial “black hole” between your company's sales and marketing efforts. You'll learn from you peers during this session.

August 18, 2010

Join me for a complimentary live webinar with MarketingSherpa's Todd Lebo and Jen Doyle on “How to Generate Leads Using Search and Social Media”

Here's a chart of how Marketers are currently using Social Media.

We're hearing the words "inbound marketing" more and more these days. The idea is simple - your sales team's pipeline magically fills as prospects seek your company out. Of course, it's easier said than done. To help generate revenue using search engines and social media sites you'll learn the following:

August 06, 2010

B2B marketers have been hit hard in recent years and have faced enormous challenges. One of the greatest challenges marketers continue to face is converting leads to pipeline revenue which could actually be the result of a bigger problem — marketers not generating high-quality leads in the first place.

This week, MarketingSherpa launched their 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey and they’re looking for B2B Marketers to provide their data and insights via this short survey. It’s your opportunity to give your opinion on best practices, tactics and results in the key areas of marketing automation, lead nurturing, lead scoring and managing the complex sale. As a thank you, all participants will receive an offer for a complimentary copy of the Executive Summary of the 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report.

July 26, 2010

If you lead a team of marketers, you likely have a creative bunch. People who, ideally, have a lot of passion about what they do – the key ingredient for successful social media and content marketing.

But that natural passion can easily get buried under layers of indiscernible corporate fiat. So how do you help your team break free of the stultifying grind that makes the average enterprise run? How do you make sure they don’t just feel like a cog in the wheel mindlessly hewing to corporate policy and filling spreadsheets all day?

I sat down with Daniel Burstein, the Editor of MarketingExperiments, for an interview about the role and importance of heart and passion in sales, marketing, social media, and content marketing. And, well, inspiring passion in a sales and marketing team is one of my passions. So read the below interview, which initially appeared on the MarketingExperiments blog, and then let me know how you share that drive with your team, or how your leaders do (or do not) keep you fired up about your mission…

June 21, 2010

For those of us in marketing and sales, our jobs are even tougher thanks to the busy lives of the decision makers we're trying to reach. Overwhelmed, impossible deadlines, crazy busy - these are just some of the words today's decision makers are using to describe their lives at work - and probably outside of work as well.

The biggest hurdle we need to overcome is cutting through the clutter to show the decision makers information that is relevant and that will help them make their lives easier.

You may have the best content in the world, but there are just some things that must be discovered through a human, two-way conversation. To put some perspective on how the human touch impacts marketing performance, I was interviewed by Christopher Doran VP, Marketing for Manticore Technology to focus on the importance of leveraging personalized outreach along with marketing automation to improve your success.

In the interview I answer the following questions from Chris:

How can strategic phone outreach impact lead scoring?

What do you think it’s critical for marketing to learn on the phone that they cannot learn through online behavior?

What are the top 3 relationship-building impacts teleprospecting can help marketing achieve?

Can you share an example of something learned in a call that enabled a company to improve their online marketing programs?

What do you think is the biggest benefit for marketing from Marketing Automation systems?

I'd love your input... Where else do you see the human touch making a big impact marketing performance?

May 18, 2010

In a recent post I talked about the most important B2B marketing metrics to CEO’s or what I believe CEO’s should be measuring. All too often Marketing is measuring one thing while the CEO’s are asking a question those measurements don’t answer.

The biggest challenge for marketers is the quality vs. quantity tug-of-war. I think most realize quality leads are what sales wants (and the ones that will close) but the quantity of leads always seems to be top of mind with CEO’s which force marketers switch focus and bring in lots of leads instead of quality leads. What happens next? The CEO doesn’t see revenue (lots of leads don’t equal good leads) and then gets frustrated that marketing isn’t providing any ROI.

So, how do you build a lead generation program that generates quality leads, creates revenue, and meets your CEO's goals? To answer this question I’ve invited Aaron Ross, CEO of PebbleStorm and the author of "PREDICTABLE REVENUE: Lessons Learned From Growing Salesforce.com’s $1 Billion Sales Machine."

During the webinar you’ll learn:

How to build a lead generation machine that will predictably generate leads month-after-month

How to ensure sales follows up on every lead

The two things CEOs care MOST about that you must understand

A simple 6-step call agenda to help salespeople convert new leads into qualified opportunities

May 11, 2010

Lead generation remains the top reason most companies exhibit at events and tradeshows. And B2B marketers are constantly looking for ideas they can use to drive more ROI from their events budget.

I came across this helpful post by Mike Thimmesch on 100 Trade Show Lead Generation Ideas that's worth checking out. The following is a sampling of Thimmesch's tips that I though were useful:

4. Go to fewer trade shows, but put more effort into booth staff preparation and promotions for each remaining show. 6. Track leads to determine and expand in the shows with the best ROI 9. Get a booth space closer to the hub of traffic, or by a bigger competitor 28. Have your sales people invite their prospects to visit your booth and set up meetings in advance 29. Send an email invitation to the show’s pre-registered attendee list for this year, and the registered attendee list from last year 30. Use social media to reach more attendees 32. Post your trade show schedule on your website with a link to sign up for appointments 45. Giveaway something useful to your target audience 46. Have a contest for attendees in your booth

After reading the list of 100, here’s a few more tips I would add:

Follow-up quickly after the event. Think about your follow-up process before the event happens not afterwards.

Create event follow-up content pieces, talking points and email templates for your sales team to use to add value and continue the conversation in a relevant way rather than "pitching" everybody.

Develop a nurturing track that for event attendees connects with the theme or the content of the event. Try to do this at least for a few months at minimum.

See the event as a conversation (or conversation starter) not a acampaign. Don't stop the dialog. Brainstorm ways you can keep the dialog going.

May 07, 2010

Last year, I launched the B2B Lead Gen Roundtable Group on LinkedIn. It started with a simple goal: to create a group to discuss and share ideas that focus on the many aspects of B2B lead generation such as lead nurturing, lead management, teleprospecting, social media and more.

We didn’t start the group to become the biggest; we just wanted it to be the best.

Amazingly, in less than a year, the group has grown to over 5,062 members with hundreds of discussions and thousands of helpful comments. With a such big community, It takes time to manage the spam and to keep the group focused but Brooke Bower (our fearless group manager at InTouch) is doing a great job. In fact, Brooke was written about in this post Go for Brooke by Michael Benidt and Sheryl Kay.

Thanks to all of the members whose contributions make this group a success. I can’t wait to see what another year will bring.

April 30, 2010

I recently wrote about the 8 critical success factors for lead generation 2.0. Then #9 came to mind – effectiveness. Simply put, make the most of what you have. Its too easy to fall into the trap of selling everything to everybody, or deluding yourself that the reason for more leads isn’t access to endless resources.

Check out the MarketingExperiments Quarterly Research Journal. It's a 112-page publication is full great ideas to help you boost your lead generation, website, email, social media and make your overall marketing more effective. I contributed some research in the report on lead nurturing too.

Also, I think you'll find this post, "On Effectiveness: Think more, and do less" relevant too. It gives tips on how to become a "strategic quitter" so can focus you energy where you'll make the biggest difference with your marketing and lead generation and marketing.

April 29, 2010

The single biggest issue for B2B marketers is effective lead generation. I wrote an eight part series on building an effective lead generation program a while back. To help readers who missed the series, I pulled all the posts together in order.

April 26, 2010

It’s that time of the year again – MarketingSherpa is sending out a call for speakers for their 7th annual B2B Marketing Summit, which will take place in October in both Boston and San Francisco.

This year’s Summit is focused on providing you with the interactive training, practical tools and proven techniques you need to generate more highly-qualified leads to improve your companies’ results, from the top of the funnel to your bottom line.

If you have a great B2B marketing success story to tell, or have learned valuable lessons you want to share with your fellow marketers, MarketingSherpa wants to hear from you.The deadline for submissions is Wednesday, May 12 and they’re interested in sessions that will help marketers improve:

April 19, 2010

It's important to think of lead generation as a process, rather than an isolated event, or a series of campaigns. A process can be continually improved through ongoing testing and refinement and will generate higher quality results more cost effectively (i.e. reduce expense-to-revenue ratio) and improve overall ROI.

Think about your lead generation process as being controlled on a mixing board. Let’s start with 5 of the biggest dials on the board so that we can start to tune in and turn up our lead generation ROI:

Dial 1 - "Turn up" lead quantity. Increase your program response rates across multiple lead generation channels to drive more inquires. Get more of the right people in the right companies to respond across multiple tactics through testing.

Dial 5 – “Turn up” closed sales. Focus on developing pipeline acceleration programs to shorten your time-to-revenue. This requires marketing to go beyond demand generation to help sales reduce friction in order to close more sales.

The mixing board analogy seems even more appropriate as you think about continuous process improvement. As the process develops you will need to consistently make adjustments to the dials as you respond to feedback and spikes in the flow. This is not a "set it and forget it" endeavor.

So, what is lead scoring anyway? Here's how I see it. Lead scoring helps quantify the value of a lead based on: the profile of the prospect, behavior (online and/offline), demographics and the likelihood to buy within a defined time frame. Often there is explicit User-Supplied Data (e.g., Registration Forms) and Implicit User-Tracked Behavior (e.g., what content have they engaged?) included in the scoring as well.

Lead scoring can be helpful, but when you have a complex sale, it's just only part of what's needed to qualify sales ready leads. It’s the human touch of conversation that provides the certainty that a lead is sales ready and that comes from the many nuances gleaned from a personal interaction.

I've noticed a lot of marketers with a complex sale are using lead scoring as the only means of lead qualification before they route leads to their sales team.

Lead scoring is not a substitute for human touch. Rather, it prioritizes where you need invest the human touch.

Still, the recipe for implementing a lead scoring program remains largely a mystery for most marketers. This subject deserves more attention than I am giving it in this post, but I will explore this in more detail in future posts.

To start, here are the main elements of lead scoring:

Targeting/Messaging/Calls-to-Action (right people, right companies?)

Explicit User-Supplied Data (e.g., Registration Forms)

Implicit User-Tracked Behavior (e.g., what content have they engaged? online and offline)

Phone Qualification & Discovery

Sales Qualification & Discovery

Points 4 and 5 are areas that often get overlooked and may lead to the expectation that leads are sales ready, when they may not be. Lead scoring and automation support a process of lead qualification, but there are more fundamental aspects of lead management that often get overlooked.

March 30, 2010

The purpose of B2B marketing and lead generation is to help the sales team sell; however marketers can often get so wrapped up in driving campaign activity they seem to forget it's about driving sales conversion and helping the sales team achieve better results.

February 19, 2010

Today CEOs expect marketers to provide metrics and to be accountable to meeting their numbers just like sales people. They do have a bunch of activity metrics and some squishy metrics like brand recognition.

At the same time, most CEOs agree that they aren’t getting enough activity at the top of the sales funnel. Thus their marketers are constantly reminded that more leads are needed...now! When the revenue doesn't immediately materialize, CEOs will lament, why can't I see ROI from marketing?

This is what CEOs should be asking?

What effect are our marketing investments having on sales productivity?

What can marketing do to lower the combined expense to revenue ratio of sales and marketing?

As marketers, I believe the key is to look at why are we measuring our marketing in the first place?

I'd love to get your input on what you believe are the most important B2B marketing metrics for CEOs?

February 12, 2010

As I’ve written before, when dealing with the complex sale, most people aren’t coming to your website to buy; they’re coming to your site for information. And people are hesitant about giving up too much info on forms before you've earned their trust.

Have you thought about your web forms? How much information are you asking for before you've earned their trust?

I’ve invited Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Director of MECLABS Group (parent company of MarketingExperiments, InTouch and MarketingSherpa), to show us how to optimize our web forms to increase conversion of that traffic.

During this complimentary webinar, Dr. McGlaughlin will be performing live
optimizations and providing specific advice on improving your online
lead generation efforts. You can check out this short video of Dr. McGlaughlin speaking on optimizing
email responses.

Nurture your existing customers. Don't just emphasize new
account acquisition nurturing. From this point forward you should look to nurture your current customers with the same energy and optimism as you do with leads and you’ll be amazed with the results.

January 29, 2010

Forecasting Clouds ranked the top 20 CRM blogs based on their content, readability and frequency of posting. As I read over the list of blogs, I discovered some new ones worth reading along with a number of others I already follow like John Jantsch, Duct Tape
Marketing Blog; Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba who write the Church of the Customer; and David Raab, Customer Experience Matrix. I was honored to be included on their list too and be included in such great company.

January 28, 2010

Effective lead generation really depends on how
much you know about your target audience and how well you use that
information to tailor a relevant messages and conversations.

I thought this post by Carolyn Goodman for Target Marketing Magazine was a good reminder of how we can improve our lead-gen results by being more targeted with our messages.

I know this is a basic idea and many of you do this this already but
knowing something and actually doing it are two different things. This article prompted me to make really make sure I'm doing this consistently. Hopefully, it will prompt you too.

I wouldn't stop at targeting by vertical and job title. There's many additional ways you can can segment and target messages including; Stage in the buying process, Company size, job function, trigger events, role in buying process and more.

January 27, 2010

Tradeshows and events are still being used consistently by B2B marketers for lead generation. With that in mind, Roger Lewis has some useful tips on how to improve your lead management strategy with from tradeshows. Lewis emphasizes how vital lead capture is to the lead management process.

He writes:

Without the continuity of using one lead management solution across all your yearly events, your company is often left with:

Inconsistent data fields that are difficult to import into CRM systems;

Unnecessary or missing data;

Different formats that need to be painstakingly modified;

No ability to capture lead qualification survey data; and most importantly,

Missed sales opportunities because the sales group is forced to cull through a list of unqualified contacts.

I agree. I believe a key aspect is developing a process that emphasizes lead quality over lead quantity. Well meaning marketers can ruin their lead generation results by rushing an unqualified list of tradeshow attendees to their sales team. Early stage leads - those who are not ready to speak to a sales person yet - are great candidates for an effective lead nurturing program.

After doing numerous lead qualification programs at InTouch, we have found only 5% to 10% of trade show inquiries are truly sales ready leads; so don't pass marketing driven inquiries to your sales people until they're more rigorously qualified as sales ready leads.

We must realize that the extreme time pressure salespeople
face—especially those with a complex sale—requires them to ignore what
is not immediately relevant and highly likely to produce revenue. Why?
They are not paid to do anything else. And that makes quality more
important than quantity to them.

January 21, 2010

The January sales push well on it's way and most B2B marketers I know are looking more ways to generate leads faster. But here's a question to ponder...

Do you have a process have a process for handing
leads (from sales) back to marketing when they are not sales ready? If not, I recommend you consider at re-engaging the leads you already have in your database and pay special attention to the leads your sales team didn't convert last year.

I'd like to share what we learned from a lead re-engagement test we just completed for a large communications company. We tested a lead nurturing program to re-engage the following types of "old" leads:

Leads that were "open" but not touched by a sales person in 90+ days

Leads worked by sales but marked as "closed - lost" meaning they didn't buy

We started with a simple multi-touch lead nurturing program that included: a 3 touch email track, the emails connected to educational articles, and our teleprospecting team made follow-up calls (based on email engagement replies, clicks and opens).

January 04, 2010

To help you start the New Year, I’d like to wrap up my Lead Generation Checklist Series with the secret to successful lead generation – and, for that matter, marketing in today’s B2B space: lead nurturing.

At it's core, B2B lead generation is about building relationships. In today’s commoditized business climate, the one thing that sets apart companies with a complex sale is how well they build and nurture long-term leads.

While lead generation initiates and perpetuates dialogue with the right people in the right companies in the quest for opportunities that are relatively imminent, lead nurturing keeps the conversation going over time, building solid relationships. It allows the creation of interest in products and services while bringing the leads to sales-ready states when the buying opportunity presents itself.

To ensure successful lead nurturing you must:

Have a lead development process in place to cultivate marketing leads into sales ready leads.

Employ methods to motivate sales people for consistent contact with prospects who may not yet be ready to buy.

Have a process for ensuring that your Sales team hands back inactive leads for further nurturing by marketing. That centralized database that I keep emphasizing will come in handy now. Sales can make notes as to why they are not going to use the leads and give feedback to Marketing at this point.

Capture future opportunities that are being currently missed and nurture them into viable sales. This is where Marketing can take many opportunities that are being ignored and keep them warm for Sales.

Leverage content to position sales people as trusted advisors. A carefully crafted lead nurturing program anticipates the prospect’s questions and responds with timely answers. This inspires awareness that you are creating value by providing useful information. Relevancy is the key.

Aid in positioning sales people as trusted advisors. By consistently offering relevant content in the context of lead nurturing, the potential customer’s inner dialogue should be: something like this: “You and I have been talking for quite a while, and I feel that you understand me, my company and my industry. You have given me useful and pertinent ideas on this issue, and you have helped me sell the idea to my colleagues and they understand and accept it. It’s a challenging project, but I think you can do it. Let’s get going.”

Brian Carroll is CEO of InTouch and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (McGraw-Hill) and the B2B Lead Generation Blog with expertise related to B2B marketing, lead generation and complex sales.